Old-Time Baked Rice Custard

As I've mentioned, I'm needing to restrict my grains to primarily brown rice for the time being. I told a good friend that I was making and eating a lot of baked rice pudding, using my mother's 1950s-era recipe. My friend asked if I could give her this recipe. I thought perhaps this recipe was on my blog, but I couldn't locate it. Perhaps I was just thinking of posting it and never did.

Anyway, I thought I'd share, as this really is a delicious, frugal, simple, and gluten-free dessert that the whole family can enjoy. 

Baked Rice Custard

2 well-beaten eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups milk

1 1/4 cup cooked, cooled rice (I use brown rice)

1 cup raisins, optional

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Dash cinnamon

Dash nutmeg

Oven 325 degrees F

Combine eggs, sugar, and salt. Gradually add milk. Add rice, raisins, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg

Poor into buttered 1-quart casserole. Set in shallow pan; pour hot water into pan 1 inch deep. Bake in slow oven 1 1/2 hours, or until a knife inserted in the center comes clean.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

So that was my mother's primary way to make this recipe. I've adjusted this to meet my need for simpler prep (skip the water bath), individual portions, and dairy-free.

I substitute soy milk for dairy milk, bake the custard in buttered custard cups, skip the pan of water as a water bath, and reduce the temp to about 300 degrees F. (The temperature can be reduced by 25 degrees F when not using the water bath method.) In custard cups, this bakes at 300 F for about 35-40 minutes and makes 5 to 6 custard cups.

I also like to change the recipe up a bit. One of my current favorites is almond-rice custard. I omit the cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and optional raisins and add 1 teaspoon of almond extract. For the almond rice custard, I like to top servings with raspberry or cherry preserves. 

I enjoy rice custard so much that I would choose this over cakes and cookies most days, which is a very good thing as I'm currently not able to eat cakes and cookies.

Another Spring Cleaning Task: Lining Kitchen Shelves

Actually, I only lined one shelf, the one that gets the messiest, where I store all of the bottles of cooking liquids like oils, molasses, soy sauce, vinegar, and honey. The oils, molasses, and honey are the worst offenders in the pantry. They drip down the sides of the containers and make a mess of the shelf.

I had put off lining this particular shelf for literally years. I didn't have shelf paper or anything to use in place of shelf paper . . . or did I? 

Remember all of that brown paper that came as packing material during the shutdowns? Okay, maybe you got lots of styrofoam pellets instead. I got reams of crumpled brown paper. I rolled up the paper and stored the rolls on end in a larger box.

I used some of the paper for creating a barrier between layers in boxes of onions, potatoes, and tomatoes harvested from my garden and stored in our cold room. I also used some directly in the garden to suppress weeds among vegetables. And I used some as gift wrap.

As I was cleaning up the "liquids" shelf in the pantry, I remembered my supply of brown paper.

I cut the paper to fit, taping down the ends.

I relined the pie tin that catches oil dribbles.

I made extra squares to go under the honey and molasses bottles so the jugs don't stick to the paper shelf lining. (The squares stick to the bottom of the bottles. As I lift a bottle or jug, the square paper comes with it, but not the shelf liner.)

And when I finished the job, this is how it looked. Nice, neat, tidy, and will be super easy to clean when the paper gets gunked up again. Bonus, I'll be able to compost the old paper and replace it with more of the free brown paper.

Yes, it would be nice if the paper had some sort of attractive pattern. But free is a pretty amazing price.